For many surgical procedures, it is necessary to make a large opening in the human body to expose the area that requires surgical repair. There are instruments available that allow for viewing of certain areas of the human body through, for example, a natural body opening or a small puncture wound, and thus avoid the need for making such large openings. These instruments, called endoscopes, can be used in conjunction with specialized surgical instruments to detect, diagnose, and repair areas of the body that previously required open surgery to access.
Some surgical instruments used in endoscopic procedures are limited by the manner in which they access the areas of the human body in need of repair. In particular, the instruments may not be able to access tissue or organs located deep within the body or that are in some way obstructed and inaccessible. In addition, many of the instruments are limited by the way they grasp tissue, apply a suture, or recapture the needle and suture. Furthermore, many of the instruments are complicated and expensive to use due to the numerous parts and/or subassemblies required to enable them to function properly. Suturing remains a delicate and time-consuming aspect of most surgeries, including those performed endoscopically.
Suturing instruments, and more specifically suturing instruments used in endoscopic procedures, are generally rigid and do not provide the operator a range of motion to access difficult to reach parts of the anatomical region requiring sutures. Accordingly, multiple instruments of various configurations and sizes must be used to access all of the necessary tissue areas. These limitations of suturing instruments complicate the endoscopic procedure for the surgeon by requiring the insertion and removal of multiple instruments from a surgical site as the target suturing area changes during the course of the surgical procedure.